Dancing with the people

As the Ondo governorship polls loom, I am sad at the humour of the hour. The irony of comedy is that it accepts the malady of our civilisation more than its triumph. Comedy emerges from the imperfections around us – a stumble, a misspeak, an act of naivety, an inefficient regime, etc. They often, on a higher level, point out the darkness of great vices: murder, betrayal, lies, hypocrisy, theft.

That is why some of the great writers from Shakespeare to Soyinka have deployed humour to squeeze out laughter. After that, we scowl. When Chinua Achebe writes A Man of the People, he drapes his tale with a satiric robe so that when we laugh, we end it with a grimace. That was why playwright Bertolt Bretcht inaugurated a new form of theatre to moderate laughter and tears because, sometimes, we are carried away with the giddy sway of the laugh.

So, if you look at the Southwest today, you will realise how much laughter we have lost. From Ogun State to Ekiti, we have gradually lost that belly laugh that often reminds us of the grotesque. We no longer have the Ibadan episodes with a man who tormented us to mock his beaded vainglory and party flourishes. Nor are we risible at the other governor with a perpetual sad-happy mien who brandished occultism as a brand of political coercion, or the Gestapo man who broke our ribs with his compulsive dalliance with the gulag. Of course, we cannot forget the delusion of grandeur from the one with the phony Awo cap. They all gave a sort of absurd humour. But the humour was not because they made our roads or empowered the feeble or fed the hungry or healed the sick, but because they celebrated a world of impotence in which their feathery bowers and ungainly steps recalled the reign of peacocks without beauty.

The humour came out of sadness, because their kingdoms were founts of oppression. Where things go well, we see few examples of humour. “There is no humour in heaven,” quips Mark Twain, perhaps the foremost satirist in the world of letters.

Ondo’s Mimiko belches out humour because his basic crust is betrayal at every level of a people, the Southwest Yorubas, who are on a train of togetherness based not just on kinship but on the high road of collective empowerment.

It was to support the agenda of togetherness that Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet extraordinaire, noted “That every part to every part may shine/ distributing the light… from race to race, from one blood to another/ beyond resistance to human wisdom.” Dante writes his epic about heaven and hell, and he lists the names of people, great and small, who will find themselves where they belong based on their deeds or misdeeds.

The verse called Divine Comedy is a sad story, emphasising Twain’s reference to humourless heaven. So whether you are governor or senator or president, stewardship is important, and when you fail, you find yourself in hell. Dante is not concerned with Biblical heaven or hell but the judgment of history. Those who misrule go to hell. Abacha, for instance, goes to hell.

One governor who does not want a part of Dante’s poetic inquisition is Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State, who is marking his second year in office. His road to the throne overflowed with thorns. He set out on a battle to win a mandate and turn the state into a model. When he was sworn in two years ago, I noted in this column what an uphill task lay ahead. He had a pedigree not only of a man who had dripped with promises, but who had staked out his personal integrity as an activist. As I left town that evening with a few other journalists, I wondered how he was going to make a difference. Ado Ekiti lay prostrate, dust heralded us from street to street, the houses looked forlorn but the people slobbered with hope. Under Governor Oni, they had the sort of look and life that Dante painted: “without hope, we live in desire.” To have desire for food, good education, infrastructure and jobs without visible prospects of fruition maligns the soul. Hope encourages desire, or else blind desire leads to crimes of fraud and violence that Seneca describes as the sources of all human injuries.

The next day, I spoke to him on phone and he said in his baritone: “I have no choice. We have to fight poverty and eradicate it.”

I visited at his first anniversary, and he had set the tempo. The next time I visited was during his mother’s burial and entered Ado-Ekiti with a friend from the United States. We had problem navigating the city. It was dusk, and everywhere work was going on. “This looks like a construction site,” was the comment of my friend, and that was before we entered the entrails of the city. That was when we knew the extent of work going.

The city was a massive construction site, and I learned in a subsequent visit that it was even more elaborate than I thought, and he had spread the tentacles of development far. I noted in this column that in a phone-in radio programme, some callers wondered why he took on many roads simultaneously. They were afraid he would not complete any. To mark his two years in office, he inaugurated 10 roads of 103 kilometres about the distance between Lagos and Ibadan. This is with the accompaniment of drainage, setbacks and greenery. Those who feared for him did so because they were not used to a furious pace of development. He also commissioned five water treatment plants, one of which I had seen.

He has complained about the frustrations of the elements. Rains have stood in the way, and he has quite some more work going on. But his heart is in the right place.

The Ekiti people have been known for their love of education, and the challenge should be to encourage the people to see education not as an end in itself. They love their books and their PHDs, but that is not the way to go. In the United States, states with the higher levels of education like New York, California, Colorado, North Carolina have the highest levels of prosperity. The problem with us as a people is lack of productivity. That was why Fayemi has fought a few battles. One of them is the battle over teacher tests. He was resisted, but he has stuck to the principle that those who teach must know. And he is winning that battle. Another challenge to education is standards. A private school pupil received a scowl from his teacher the other day in Lagos when he corrected her (the teacher’s) English. That is why Fayemi’s stand is in the right place.

His Ikogosi project is in advanced stage and I visited the place with all the chalets and the warm springs and the business potential. It reminded me of the poet Dryden’s phrase, “Here’s God’s plenty.” It was when we walked down from one set of chalets that we met a group of women, dressed as if from some social event of joy, singing in gratitude for his social security programme. The governor danced with them. The intellectual governor, as some have caricatured him, was in sync with dance and song with the old women.

With such performance, he can dance. Just as Fayemi is dancing, can Mimiko boast such gyrations based on performance? That is the humour of the hour we seek.

This campaign of calumny against Mimiko from practically all the journalists in Tinubu’s THE NATION simply because Mimiko refused to join the ACN is now becaoming nauseating. To think that a brilliant mind well versed in prose like Omatseye from my beloved Delta State would fall to this level is mind boggling. Rather than this mudslinging why not allow the Ondo people decide at the polls. That is how democracy is run. THE NATION has simply decided that it mission at this point in time is to bring Mimiko down at all cost. This is not good for our democracy. It is sickening to advocate for all the Yorubas belong to one party. What is Mimiko’s crime, if I may ask?

FULA

INSTEAD YOU SHOULD LIST HIS ACHIEVEMENTS AFTER FOUR YEARS, THAT WAY YOU WILL CONVINCE MORE PPLE THAT YOU ARE AN OBJECTIVE OBSERVER.

Olaitan Y.O.

Excellent!Facts speak for themselves.People respond or react through election if only their wish is allowed to count.No campaingn of columny is involved,but if this is one, then, Gov Mimiko is a player in it.Log in into a Yoruba popular newspaper and dissect an headline-Why Change a Performer.It is all about politics.Once again,this is beautiful!

Remigius

It’s now very glaring that Sam Omatseye’s can’t see beyond his nose. His only source of info is the one sided THE NATION reports of events in Ondo state. Truth is,if Fayemi has one reason to dance,Mimiko has more than 100 reasons to dance. It’s even very laughable that Omatseye’s ACN are not really on ground in Ondo state. In fact,I don’t see the party winning in any of the 18 local government areas. May be,just may be,after the ‘ides’ of October,these debaucherous columnists will regain their senses. Mimiko is certainly unstoppable!

Your writing skill is not in doubt.what is doubtful is the sincerity of your write up.i would have been surprised if The Nation were objective in its analysis of the political development in Ondo state.does he that pays the piper no longer dictate the tune?. when did Asiwaju stop being an interested party in Ondo politics?

kd bright

No amount of unfounded propaganda can stop Mimiko from retaining his tenancy at Alagbaka Govt House come October 20th, Sam and his likes cannot stop a moving train like the IROKO, not even through these their debaucherous and fallacious writings. IROKO is a golden fish that has no hiding place.

kd bright

This is a serious warning to the Nation newspaper and these your highly ethnic/ political party minded columnists that have lost touch with reality, you people are on the verge of loosing me and ‘my teeming supporters’ if you do not stop this your mode of reportage mostly on political/ethnic issues that are devoid of any sense of objectivism. For Christ sake, this houlabaloo about Ekiti state being ‘a huge construction site’, is it only in Ado or every part of the state. I pass other places like Oye, Ikere among others and I havent seen anything to concur with all these unfounded claims these TINUBU paid columnists are feeding the readers everyday.

‘INEC declares MImiko winner’, that was d caption on The Nation on Monday.what a daily . Omatsaye should berry his head in shame. Now I am disgusted.

folahan

Only God knows why people are getting drowned in the pool of deceit these days.A blind man,even though might not see,hears the sound of this construction equipments all working virtually in all parts of the state.Enough of mere sheer censure,Fayemi is working and should be supported with encouragements and prayer.OMO AYIYE.

folahan

Only God knows why people are getting drowned in the pool of deceit these days.A blind man,even though might not see,hears the sound of this construction equipments all working virtually in all parts of the state.Enough of mere sheer censure,Fayemi is working and should be supported with encouragements and prayers.OMO AYIYE.

folahan

Only God knows why people are getting drowned in the pool of deceit these days.A blind man,even though might not see,hears the sound of this construction equipment all working virtually in all parts of the state.Enough of mere sheer censure,Fayemi is working and should be supported with encouragements and prayers.OMO AYIYE.